Although this may be old news, I'm going to assume that most of you have listened to or at least have heard of The Bed Intruder song. This YouTube video is a great example of the simple definition of remix that we discussed in lecture; to take an original and alter it in some way. To understand the remix, you must first be able to understand the reference, but my roommate is a prime example of why this is not necessarily the case with The Bed Intruder song. Apparently the song made it onto the Billboard charts (what is this world coming to) and she had downloaded the song and had been listening to it on her iTunes without knowing anything about it. Once I showed her the news story and explained to her how hilarious it was that she thought it was a legitimate song, she no longer listened to it in the same way. In terms of what type of remix this is, I think that it could be considered 'transformative storytelling'. The characters in the news story are the same in the YouTube video, but they are being placed in a different context. Check out the video below and let me know what you think!
Oh my gosh, this song played in my apartment for nearly four weeks straight!
ReplyDeleteIt's absolutely hilarious and eventually it does get old, but not after a few good laughs.
That's so interesting that your roommate responded almost backwards, because she clearly formed very different morals and a different general understanding about it. I agree with you completely about being transformative story-telling because it does not attempt to alter and change anything about the actual news story itself, rather, it makes something new out of the material and perhaps something also more appreciated.
This goes the same for the famous video "Charlie Bit Me", on youtube, it seems as though almost every popular video on the site is followed by a remix involving auto-tune (and other tools) in order to make another wave of popularity follow it. It's interesting that we find a need to do this, as though our brains work so differently that interest is found by mixing up material completely!